Teapot Dome scandal

The Teapot Dome scandal was an American political scandal which occurred in 1920, resulting in the Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall becoming the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison. When Warren G. Harding was elected President in 1920, he brought into his administration many of his friends, who became known as the "Ohio gang". Harding trasnferred the management of the US Navy's oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming from the Navy to the Interior Department under his old friend Albert B. Fall. Fall siphoned oil reserves at Wyoming into the Mammoth Oil Company, and other reserves at Elk Falls, California into the Pan-American Petroleum and Transportation Company. Harding, who was in no way implicated, died before the full extent of the scandal and the involvement of Fall was exposed by US Senator Thomas J. Walsh from 1922 to 1924. Fall was found guilty of accepting a $100,000 bribe and was imprisoned from 1929 to 1932.